New in Brief: A National Roundup

N.Y. Appeals Court Upholds Bronx Boards Suspension

A state appeals court has upheld New York City Schools Chancellor
Rudy F. Crews suspension of two community school boards last
winter.

The District 7 and District 9 boards in the Bronx had not exhausted
their administrative remedies when they sued to overturn Mr. Crew's
action, the appellate court ruled this month.

The ruling was the latest twist in the chancellor's months-long
campaign to oust members of those and other local boards, whom he has
accused of misdeeds ranging from mismanaging their districts to abusing
their positions for personal gain.

In April, lower courts had ruled against Mr. Crew and reinstated the
two Bronx boards. They remained suspended, however, pending the
appeal.

A majority of the members of the two boards won re-election in May,
but Mr. Crew blocked them from taking office for at least a year under
authority granted him by a state law passed in March.

Tardy Parents Face Fees

A California charter school has instituted a policy that has long
been a part of the for-profit day-care business--late fees.

Parents who are tardy picking up their prekindergarten and
kindergarten children are now charged $1 for every minute that they are
late.

The notification letter that the Fenton Avenue Charter School in
Lakeview Terrace sent to parents also states that the second time a
child is picked up late, the school will both charge the fee and notify
the county's department of family and children services.

School officials said some parents were jeopardizing the safety of
their children by repeatedly picking them up late.

Tulsa Passes Bond Issue

Third time's the charm in Tulsa, where city voters have approved by
wide margins a $94.5 million school-bond issue, the largest in
Oklahoma's history.

Attempts to raise similar amounts in 1994 and last year fell short
of the 60 percent majority required for passage of school bonds. Except
for two bond proposals for buses and air conditioning in 1991, the
42,000-student district had not won at the polls since 1969.

Superintendent John W. Thompson said that packaging the request into
four separate bond proposals--for building renovation and construction,
libraries, classroom materials and equipment, and school buses--also
helped residents know what they were voting for Oct. 8.

Neb. Board Delays Rules

The Nebraska state school board has postponed new rules for
educating expelled students in the hope that lawmakers will rescind a
law requiring districts to provide them with an alternative
education.

The board's eight members unanimously opposed the law calling for
the new rules, which the state legislature passed this spring. The law,
which takes effect July 1, compels districts to offer
alternative-education opportunities to expelled students.

"Expulsion means banished, you're out of here," board member
Kathleen McCallister said last week.

Ms. McCallister and other board members said if the law is not
repealed in the next legislative session, which begins in January, they
will approve regulations that give districts great flexibility in
carrying out the law.

Seattle Mulls Patches

The superintendent of the Seattle schools has suggested that giving
nicotine patches to students might be a way to help them quit
smoking.

John Stanford, who became the district's schools chief last year,
made the statement in a routine memo to the school board last month
after a new district survey revealed that 61 percent of Seattle
students had tried cigarettes by the time they turned 13.

He directed district health officials to devise a comprehensive plan
to address student smoking, which could include the nicotine
devices.

The patches, which are worn like bandages for about two months as
they release nicotine into the bloodstream, have shown some success in
helping wean adult smokers from their habit.

Chicago Shuts Homeless Site

The Chicago school district has closed a school that served homeless
children in 1st to 8th grades to satisfy a demand from plaintiffs in a
class action.

Representatives of homeless parents and children filed a lawsuit in
1992 claiming that the single-teacher classroom was a method
neighborhood schools used to keep out homeless students, said Rene
Heybach, the supervisory attorney for the homeless-advocacy project of
the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago.

The group had charged the school district with violating the federal
Stewart B. McKinney Act of 1987, which requires schools to provide a
quality education for homeless children.

Students who attended the one-room Uptown School at the Salvation
Army Emergency Lodge were sent to other district schools last
month.

Md. District Bans Frog Book

It's not easy being green, but life has been exceptionally hard for
one frog in particular. Prompted by a parent's complaint, school
officials in Baltimore County, Md., have removed the children's book
Froggy Went A-Courtin' from the shelves of its school
libraries.

Based on a folk song, the illustrated story is about a
cigarette-smoking, bank-robbing, safe-cracking degenerate frog named
Froggy who eventually gets carted off to jail for his crimes.

"The school has the responsibility to review all materials--but
there should be a more democratic process for banning a book," said the
book's author and illustrator, Kevin O'Malley, who has written and
illustrated 14 books. "They had every right to do it," but, he added,
"I hope they will reconsider."

A committee of elementary school teachers and administrators voted
unanimously last month to ban the book on the grounds that it was
inappropriate for students. School officials said the move was an act
of selection rather than censorship.

AFT Upholds Chicago Union Election

Top officials of the American Federation of Teachers have found no
merit to charges of election fraud that were lodged against leaders of
the Chicago affiliate by an unsuccessful candidate for the local
union's presidency.

A committee headed by two AFT vice presidents concluded that there
was "no credible evidence" supporting allegations brought by teacher
Deborah Lynch Walsh after she lost her bid to oust Thomas H. Reece, the
president of the Chicago Teachers Union, during the May 17
election.

"To say we're disappointed is a total understatement," Ms. Walsh
said last week after learning of the decision from a reporter.

But after weighing evidence from a hearing in Chicago last month,
the AFT officials said the election should stand. Mr. Reece garnered
72.8 percent of the vote to Ms. Walsh's 27.2 percent.

"Serious allegations and insinuations have been advanced by PACT of
election fraud and ballot stuffing," the committee wrote. "However, the
testimony and evidence has not matched the rhetoric."

Ms. Walsh stuck by her charges, however, and chided the national
union for failing at least to require the CTU to turn over operation of
future voting to a third party.

AFT officials did not address that issue in their decision.

Moreover, they obliquely rebuked Ms. Walsh by saying that while the
right to challenge election results or procedures was part of a healthy
democratic union, "the availability of that right should not be
abused."

Children's Reading Expert Dies at 102

Roma Gans, an emeritus professor of education at Teachers College,
Columbia University, and the author of books on teaching children to
read, has died. Ms. Gans, 102, died Oct. 4 at the Springside Nursing
Home in Pittsfield, Mass.

Ms. Gans joined the Teachers College faculty in 1929 and retired in
1959. She also wrote several children's books.

Many of her reading texts are still in use, including Guiding
Children's Reading Through Experience, published in 1942, and
Common Sense in Teaching Reading, published in 1963.

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